Cerevisiæ (Beers). Medicinal preparations made by adding medicines to malt wort and letting them ferment together were popular in the early part of the 18th century. It was believed that the process of fermentation extracted the properties of drugs more effectively than mere digestion. Quincy (1739) names thirty cerevisiæ, aperient, antiscorbutic, diuretic, hysteric, stomachic, &c. Many of these were compounded with numerous drugs.
Ceruse. Old Latin name for white lead. Flowers of antimony were called ceruse of antimony. The name is supposed to have had some association with wax, but the connection is not clear.
Cochleare. The usual prescription term for a spoonful, was in Latin the twenty-fourth of a cyathus or wineglassful. It was an egg-spoon, but owed its name to a pointed tip used to extract winkles from their shells as we use pins, and, the cochlear being a small snail, the name was transferred to the instrument. From it has descended the French cuillier, a spoon.
Cohobation came to mean only the repetition of distillation, the distillate being poured on the material from which it had already been distilled, and again distilled. Paracelsus uses the term cohob to signify a repetition of the same medicine.
Colcothar. The name was applied to the prepared rust of iron now called rouge, but originally to the residue left in the retort after oil of vitriol had been distilled from sulphate of iron. Paracelsus used, and some say invented, the word; but Murray traces it through the Spanish to an Arabic origin, qolqotar, which Doxy believes to have been a corruption of the Greek Chalcanthos, a solution of blue vitriol (from chalkos, copper, and anthos, flower). Colcothar was the same as crocus Martis.
Collutories. Medicines of the consistence of honey for applying to the gums and mouth. Honey and borax is an example. A fluid mouth-wash was called a collution.
Collyrium. Collyria were “dry,” or powders such as alum, sulphate of zinc, or calomel, which were insufflated into the eye; soft, or pomades applied to the eyelids; and liquid, or eye lotions. The term kollyrion was used in Greek medicine with the same meaning; it was originally derived from kollyra, a roll of bread.
Conserves properly consisted of only one medicament and sugar.
Crocus (Saffron). The term was applied to certain metallic combinations of a saffron colour, such as crocus Martis (rust of iron), crocus Veneris (a copper oxide), and crocus Metallorum (liver of antimony). Damocrates left a formula for Crocomagma, tonic cakes or trochiscs, of which saffron was the principal ingredient.
Crucible. A vessel in which metals are melted. The word is generally attributed to a supposed association with crux, crucis, a cross; but this is not proved. It was originally the name of a night-lamp, and several authorities consider it owes its name to the crossing of the wicks.